Was it only three or four months ago that gurus were bemoaning "too much complacency" in the financial markets? All that has changed -- seemingly overnight, in another of Wall Street's familiar light-from-heaven conversions. Now everybody and his Aunt Gertrude is worried about risk again.

A good thing it is, too. The long period of abnormally low interest rates in the early part of this decade encouraged a lot of irresponsible risk taking, particularly in the housing market.

Some folks who played the game too aggressively (by taking out interest-only mortgages, say) are now facing the threat of foreclosure. Bankers and investors who loaned money on too-easy terms may have to kiss their capital good-bye.

Well, what's so great about that? A scare forces the financial markets to reassess their pricing of risk. In the long run, proper risk appraisal is good for everyone.

Investors can earn a fair return without "stretching" for yield (accepting a huge amount of extra default risk for very little extra compensation). Borrowers are spared the emotional shock of being kicked out of a house -- or a car, perhaps, or a boat -- that they really can't afford. In the final analysis, foreclosures, repossessions and bankruptcies are a waste of resources, psychological as well as financial.

Happily, there's reason to believe that the recent swing toward more realistic pricing of risk is just about complete. In fact, we're seeing some cases where the markets have probably gone too far in their reappraisal.

Yesterday, for example, Gladstone Capital (NASDAQ: GLAD) posted its results for the June quarter. The small-business lender earned 42 cents per share of net investment income, exactly enough to cover GLAD's monthly dividend.

Obviously, you aren't buying General Electric here, or IBM. But GLAD is a conservatively managed outfit, with a strong commitment to maintaining (and gradually increasing) its dividend.

Does it make sense that the stock in April was priced to yield 7%, and now yields 8.8%? Has the world really changed that much?